Washington Watch
To understand how President Donald Trump promotes his presidency and policies, especially when they are being challenged, it is necessary to understand the impact that New York attorney, the late Roy Cohn, had on his approach to politics and power.
For most of his career, Cohn was a behind-the-scenes player, a ruthless practitioner of “dirty tricks” and power politics who attached himself to powerful men to assist their careers while advancing his own. He rose to prominence as a prosecutor in the case against the Rosenbergs (a couple charged, convicted, and executed as Soviet spies). He went on to serve as a key strategist working with Senator Joseph McCarthy’s congressional hearings which, while designed to expose Communist infiltration in the USA, ended up destroying more lives than uncovering Communists.
Cohn went on to advise Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, before hitching his star to a young Donald Trump as he was beginning his career in the world of New York City real estate and politics.
Cohn’s advice to those for whom he work has been distilled into three rules:
- Attack, attack, attack
2) Admit nothing, deny everything
3) No matter what happens, always claim victory and never admit defeat.
The logic behind these rules was simple. Cohn always wanted his clients or mentees to be on the offensive, project an image of power showing no weakness, and appear to be ruthless and in control. These traits are daily on display in the Trump White House in, for example, (1) his ridicule of and relentless attacks on President Biden, other Democrats, the courts, mainstream media, and those who dare to challenge him, and (2) his boastful claims of success, even when reality says otherwise (for example, that his crowds were larger than President Obama’s, that consumer prices are going down, or that he’s brought peace to eight world conflicts).
The past week provided two clear examples of Roy Cohn’s lessons at work, beginning with President Trump’s performance at Davos. In his speech before the assembled world political and business leaders, while making the case for why the USA had the right to take control of Greenland and would not be deterred from making its claim, he insulted Europeans, pointing out their weaknesses in comparison with the USA’s strength. He also threatened them with more punitive sanctions if he didn’t get his way.
Most likely this is being done to calm troubled waters— especially with members of his party worried about elections in November. The White House moves may be a change in optics and not a change in tactics. But this and the Greenland step down are early indications that there are limits to Roy Cohn’s advice when it runs smack into persistent realities that won’t give way.
Following the speech, during negotiations with the same European leaders, Trump folded. Nevertheless, emerging from their negotiations with a deal that pretty much leaves the situation as it is, Mr Trump declared victory.
A similar situation is now unfolding with regard to the real problems White House is experiencing in their campaign to detain and deport millions of undocumented immigrants from the USA. During his campaign for the presidency, Trump was on the offensive, attacking Democrats for being weak, and accusing Latin American countries of opening their prisons and mental hospitals to flood the USA with dangerous people. The immigrants themselves bore the brunt of his attacks. The results were fear and panic. After his party in Congress appropriated tens of millions of dollars enabling the White House to hire an expanded immigration enforcement agency to carry out the deportations, the president was riding high.
Early on, it became clear that Mr Trump may have had a broader agenda in mind than the removal of dangerous “illegals.” The states he chose to flood with armed enforcement agents were jurisdictions led by Democrats. This was to be an exercise in intimidation and humiliation. True to form, despite the fact that these immigration enforcement exercises in Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago, cities in Oregon, and now Minneapolis have been more problematic than successful, President Trump always declares victory and never admits defeat.
Of all of these initial forays of demonstrating power, the one that may prove the most difficult for the president is Minneapolis. He began the campaign by attacking and insulting the governor, a Somali American congresswoman, and the entire Somali community. Agents went in with a massive display of force (3000 armed federal agents, compared with the city’s police force of 600).
What the White House didn’t expect was that they would encounter massive resistance from the city’s largely white population. Churches and synagogues sent out a call for their co-religionists across the country to join them. Tens of thousands came to hold vigils and provide protective presence for the city’s immigrants.
Possibly flustered, the federal agents responded with brute force. In January, two volunteer non-violent observers who were monitoring the arrests were shot and killed. Following Cohn’s playbook, administration officials responded by attacking and attempting to smear the victims. They called them “domestic terrorists,” and said they were trying to kill law enforcement agents. True to form, they were attacking, denying every charge and admitting no mistakes
In the past, this approach has satisfied the president’s supporters and only deepened the partisan divide. That wasn’t the case this time. Some Republican senators and governors have criticized the murders, the excessive tactics used, and the lies that many White House officials told about who the victims were and what the federal agents actually did in murdering them.
Here’s where it gets interesting and may have Roy Cohn rolling over in his grave. Instead of defiance, President Trump appeared to flinch. He called Minnesota’s governor, removed the brutish “commander” he had sent to oversee the operations in Minneapolis, and suggested that there would be a reduced presence of enforcement officers in coming weeks.
Most likely this is being done to calm troubled waters— especially with members of his party worried about elections in November. The White House moves may be a change in optics and not a change in tactics. But this and the Greenland step down are early indications that there are limits to Roy Cohn’s advice when it runs smack into persistent realities that won’t give way.
